I winced as I pulled my cylindrical communicator from my pocket. That was a bruised rib. Oh well. Another problem for later. “Private Munroe, initiate a full lockdown in Sector Four, all levels!”
“Sarge? What’s going on?” He answered, thank God. He was one of my two subordinates on the security team, and he had a bad habit of falling asleep on his shifts. It wasn’t usually a big deal, but these weren’t usual times.
“Make it happen, I’ll explain later!” I didn’t have the time to get him up to speed. Hell, I wouldn’t have believed it myself without proof.
“On it, sir.” A powerful vibration passed through the hull as dozens of airtight, steel doorways slammed shut at once. “What’s going-” The last part was cut off, reduced to so much electronic gibberish.
“Private, repeat. Do you copy?”
Nothing but static. I changed channels on the comm and found that none were active.
“Septivus, are you okay?” I put out a hand, shuddering involuntarily as his suckers gripped my forearm.
His wound had mostly sealed up, but he winced as he poked the inflamed tissue with a tentacle. “I is lively, but not by much.”
“That was a brave thing you did. I wish it had talked a little more, but you did better than me.”
His beak quivered with disgust. “It is tasting most awfully.”
“I don’t doubt it. Let’s get going.” I opened the door to my quarters carefully and glanced out into the circular hallway. There was no sign of our quarry, but unless it could bust through a steel bulkhead, was stuck with us.
“Where is we going?” whispered Septivus.
“It’s got two impact pistols and we have zero,” I replied, digging through my closet for supplies. “We need to go fix that.”
Chapter 3
Checkpoint Alpha was divided into six sectors, most of which were dedicated to a specific function. Sector One was for research, Three was where ships docked for customs inspection, Five was the general living quarters, and Two and Six were nearly identical. They were given over to hydroponics, storage and other necessaries for life in isolation. When supply ships from Mars took weeks to arrive, and those from Earth several months, you needed a lot of redundancies. I always joked that a distress call was more for Space Force HR than for us, so they could start taking resumes for the next crew.
My therapist back on Earth used to say I had a dark sense of humor. I always say that’s better than none at all. What did he know? He was sitting on Earth somewhere, with all the air he could breathe, and no hideous monsters to hunt.
Sector Four was my stomping ground: security. I had repurposed a storage locker as my room. I liked the isolation. I kept odd hours, and being removed let me work on my projects without disturbing anyone. I think it’s why Septivus liked to hang out with me; his species sleeps weekly, so I was often the only one awake outside of the small night crew.
I poked my head out of my door and glanced down the brightly lit hallway. My quarters occupied the end of a corridor, which meant there was only one way to go.
“All clear,” I said, brandishing a wooden cricket club. I’d won in it in a card game with Raj in the SETI department. It wasn’t the best weapon, but it was all that presented itself. I’d taken my electronic tools while I was at it.
“I is not liking our odds,” said Septivus, his voice quavering as he followed me down the hall.
“What’re you talking about? It’s two on one.”
“Yes, but we is not knowing anything about it. It has the memories of Polgar, and she is much knowledgeable.”
“More like a know-it-all,” I replied. “Look, you need to chin up. I have a plan.”
“You do?” asked Septivus.
“You sound surprised.”
“A little,” he confessed.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I grumbled.
“Is not meaning to be offensive,” he said. “I is knowing about this as long as you, and I is not having a plan.”
“That’s why I’m head of security,” I said. “First, we swing by the weapons locker and arm up. Then, we go hunt down that imposter and end the threat.”
“Killing it? But is first contact with an alien race!”
“Nah,” I replied. “We’re second contact, at best. Chief Scientist Polgar beat us to it, and it wasn’t a good first contact.”
“I do hoping she is alright,” he said.
“Hush,” I said. Not just because we had reached a fork in the hallway, but also because I didn’t want to voice my own concerns. The alien had said she was alive, but even a human in that situation couldn’t be taken at their word. Who knew how an unknown alien would perceive little things like truth?
Speaking of… “Septivus, we’re friends, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You’d tell me if the Tralingans knew about that new species, right?”
“Yes, as long as they told me. They is not always telling me everything. Is why I is on this assignment; I is unpopular with my people, like you.”
I needed his help, I told myself. I needed another pair of eyes, and he was my friend, as hard as it was to remember sometimes. I told myself that we all have defects. Humans can’t see in ultraviolet, and Tralingans can’t read a room.
Seeing no sign of our quarry, I gestured for Septivus to follow me. Soon enough, we had arrived at the weapons locker. I tapped the door and with a pressurized hiss, the steel plade slid aside. An acrid stench attacked my nose an instant before I saw it.
“Son of a bitch!” The room’s gun cabinets had been unlocked and the contents had been thrown in a pile at the center of the room. I could just make out the warped weapons underneath a translucent purple liquid that made my eyes water when I bent down to investigate.
“It beat us here, and Polgar knew the damn codes! This must have been where it got its first pistol!”
“Is still warm,” said Septivus as he squatted next to me. “Is probably not safe for to touch.”
“It’s probably fine by now,” I said. I poked the steel floor around the congealed liquid with my cricket bat. “See, it ate through the floor a little, but it ran out of juice.”
“That should mean the guns is okay, yes?” he asked hopefully. “Get one out to checking.”
I jammed the bat into the mass of impact weapons and tried to prod the closest pistol. The viscous liquid let the bat in easily enough, but the pistol didn’t budge an inch. “No dice. The acid didn’t destroy them completely, but it fused them together. This is just a bunch of scrap metal now.”
“Excrement,” said Septivus. “We is muchly fornicated.”
“Watch your language,” I said. “You shouldn’t curse.”
“Ah, because is rude?”
“No, you’re just no good at it. You should cheer up.” One of us had to.
“Sorry, I is just frustrated. Is not a fair fight,” grumbled Septivus. “It is knowings our secrets. It is understandings where to go to hurt us.”
“Correction, it knows Chief Scientist Polgar’s secrets,” I said. “Not mine.”
I gave the pile of acid a wide berth and made my way to one of the open cabinets. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never spot the thin seam in the red velvet lining of the shelves. I inserted the blade of a small pocketknife in there, and with a gentle twist, I’d popped up a section of the shelf. I retrieved two holdout impact pistols and tossed one to Septivus, and strapped a small first aid kit around my waist.
“Is much cleverly,” said Septivus. Tralingans tend to walk on six of their limbs, reserving the more gracile pair around their face for fine motor tasks. He could just barely work the thin appendage into the trigger guard. He swayed with satisfaction. “Is not very big gun.”
“That’s the beauty of impact weapons,” I said. “A derringer-sized pistol is just as good as a rifle, shot for shot. You just get fewer shots.”
“How many is fewer?” asked Septivus.
“Two.”
“No, you’re there in case it gets the drop on me. This thing is full of tricks.” I looked at the purple mass at the center of the room and shuddered. “If it can eat through metal, I don’t want to think about what it’d do to one of us.”
I hate it when Tralingans use their third eyelid. They don’t have the friendliest eyes to start with, but they have a vaguely human shape to the iris. You can stand to look at them directly. That is, until they want to see in infra-red. They had evolved a lens specifically to shift their visual spectrum, and it gave the orbs a ghostly quality that, combined with their impossibly dark skin, made them look like something out of an old sci-fi movie.
“No worries, Gene. Is still warm. Acid is not to be much threat, I am thinking. It would not have the biomass to make much more after doings this.”
“I guess we had to get lucky sooner or later,” I said, as I inspected my pistol. I opened the back, making sure that the battery pack was fully charged. “Of course, you know what that means.”
“What is?” He twisted in place to show his curiosity.
“It means it can’t burn its way out.” I checked my comm again. Still nothing but static. “We can’t call for help either,” I said, closing the pistol with a satisfying clack. “Either we get out, or it does.”
Chapter 4
We made our way back down the hallway, setting a slow pace. “Septivus, don’t take your eyes off the ceiling. I’ll focus on ground level.”
“You is thinking it can climb?”
“I is… You got me doing it now! I’m thinking we don’t know if it can or not,” I said. “Something’s jamming the coms, so that makes me think our guest is full of surprises.”
“Where is we going?” he asked, staring intently at the ceiling. I had to guide him so he didn’t run beak first into a wall, but he did what I asked.
“If it does have the Chief Scientist’s memories, it probably knows that I already called for a lockdown. It’s standard procedure in case of a hostile intruder. If I were it, the second thing I’d do is go hole up and ride it out. Use her face to bluff the security team when they come through.”
“I see. You say is second stepping. What is first?”
“Kill us both so we can’t contradict it,” I said. I paused, wrinkling my nose. A pungent smell filled the hallway. “Septivus, did you just ink yourself?”
“What? No! Is only happening the one time. I is not smelling anything.”
“Hush,” I whispered.
Whatever that mysterious scent was, it definitely had not been there before our trip to the weapons locker. I passed by the corridor leading to my room and inhaled deeply through my nose. “Nope, not from there.”
“What is smelling like? My people is not so good at that.”
“Kinda like rotten eggs, but sweeter.” I stopped at the top of a stairwell, reluctantly taking a long sniff. “I think it’s coming from the lower levels.”
We descended the stairs in silence. There were sturdy, convenient handrails throughout the station in the event that we lost our spin and went weightless, set at multiple heights on the stairs. Septivus had a tough time; his people tended to use ramps instead of stairs, and gripping the handrails was challenging when his suction cups kept sticking. He didn’t complain, though.
The third level was identical to the fourth we had left behind: spartan, steel walls, interrupted only by windows, paths to other hallways and identical handrails.
I took a breath and regretted it instantly. “Sheeeoot!” I said, pinching my nose. I winced as my outburst echoed through the empty hallways.
“What is?”
“That stench is definitely coming from down here. Be ready for a scrap.”
I decided to follow my nose, since it was the only clue I had so far. You know how once you get accustomed to a smell, it seems to vanish after a while? Well, whatever our unfriendly alien had cooked up did not get any better with exposure. The only blessing was that I knew I was going the right way.
We came to a stop in front of a locked door at the end of a short hallway, guarded by a keypad with a small display.
“Not coming here much,” whispered Septivus. “What is?”
“Wastewater Reclamation,” I said. “It’s where we recycle black and grey water.”
“Is safely to go in?” asked the Tralingan.
“Not really, since it’s got to be in there.”
“It could just be a leaking,” he said.
“Then we might have bigger troubles than our friend. There’s a lot of infectious crap in there, literally. Don’t count on a leak; Chief Scientist Polgar had access, so it does too. Ready?”
“As readily as I will be,” he said, crouching down.
I punched in my code, which was rejected with a harsh beep. I tried it again to no result, and then punched in the last month’s code, just in case. Still nothing.
“We is stuck?”
I pulled out a security bit and attached it to my modular screwdriver. “Nope, we just won’t do it the nice way.”
I had eased the second security screw out of its thread when there was a muffled thud from within.
“Gene, hurry!” shouted a panicked Septivus.
I ignored him. There was no sense rushing things. Breaking and entering was about finesse, not brute force. Not that I did that often… anymore. I had not joined the Mars Planetary Guard voluntarily, and I was not eager to see where they would send me if went back to my old vocation. There were worse places than Mars, after all.
I pulled the keypad away and shorted together two of the wires on the back, opening the door in a clean motion. I drew the bat, but nearly dropped it as my eyes watered. If the scent had been sickening before, the fumes emitting from the room were godawful. Thank God I skipped dinner to work on my project, or I would have added it to the horrible mess.
The creature had opened one of the many barrels of fermenting biowaste. When the Space Force had designed the Checkpoint, they had decided that security should be where the wastewater went for treatment. The two meter long, cylindrical vats were laid out in rows with a spigot on the front. We typically used hydroponics for our gardening, but there were still benefits to keeping some compost on hand, for foodstuffs that didn’t take well to being without soil.
Our uninvited guest had cut out the middleman, drinking deeply from an open barrel with a long proboscis. I envied Septivus’ poor sense of smell. Thank God it hadn’t gone for the darkwater reclamation tank.
It turned to face us, those soulless eye spots focusing on me. “You again!” Its voice was still Chief Scientist Polgar’s berating tone.
“Yeah, me again!” It went for the impact pistol at its side, but I was already upon it, brandishing the cricket bat. I caught it in the side of its head with a loud thwack that reverberated in the small room.
It was less impressed than I had hoped. I barely got the bat between us before it lashed out with its chest blades. Splinters of wood flew through the air, but the cudgel held together. I swung again, hoping to use the bat before it fell to pieces.
It saw me coming this time, and tried to block me with its right arm. I had seen the move coming, though, and I had turned the bat on its side. I passed over its multi-jointed arm and caught it on the temple with all the strength I could put into it.
I owed Raj a new bat, but it slumped to the ground, completely motionless.
“Good job, Gene!” The Tralingan scuttled up behind me, peeking out from behind me like a shy toddler.
“Keep your distance,” I said.
Now that I got a good look at our guest, it was hard to tell if it was playing possum or not. Its eyespots didn’t have lids, though I supposed I couldn’t call them featureless. They resembled an insect’s compound eyes, but there was something like an iris there. There were multiple shades of compound eye, and I suspected they each performed a different job. Its pale skin didn’t have a single
curve, but instead was composed of angular planes of flesh that came together at different points. The proboscis it had used to drink from the vat lay limp on the ground, though much shorter than before. It emerged from a human looking mouth, taking the place of a tongue. The white alien looked like somebody had tried to make a human out of off-the-shelf insect parts.
Septivus’ curiosity got the better of him and he inched forward. He probed the unconscious being with one of his tentacles.
“Septivus!” I drew my impact derringer, ready for the least sign of trouble.
“I needing to check,” he said. “I think is unconscious.”
“I might’ve killed it,” I said. “It isn’t breathing.”
“May not having lungs,” replied Septivus. “Skin breather, perhaps?”
“Hey, you two!” A familiar voice came from above. “If you’re done playing with that corpse, get me down!”
We looked up and I nearly dropped my pistol. Head Scientist Polgar was glued to the ceiling, hidden from the neck down by a hardened structure. It was the same shade of purple as the acid that had destroyed our weapons, but seeing as Polgar was screaming in annoyance and not agony, it must have had a different makeup.
“Cindy, is that you?” We weren’t usually informal with each other; she could be a tad abrasive. Though, if the alien wasn’t a liar, maybe that was a mask for-
Her face turned scarlet. “Of course it’s me! I can’t believe you fell for that disguise! It wasn’t anything like me!”
“Is her,” said Septivus.
Chapter 5
“Calm down there, Ms. Polgar,” I said, putting the lid back on the vat of compost. It was too late to stop the awful stench, but at least it wouldn’t get any worse. “Getting worked up won’t help anything.”
Confessions of the Magpie Wizard Book 1: Infiltration Page 2